


Each Other Now Embrace

by Mireille



Series: Conspiracy Theory universe [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Drunken Giles-a-thon, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-24
Updated: 2009-04-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 05:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13757580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Giles and Xander spend a quiet Christmas Eve together.





	Each Other Now Embrace

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the lyrics to "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." This particular Giles and Xander are part of the universe of "Conspiracy Theory," written by myself and soft_princess, who has graciously given me permission to use it for this fic. It's set a couple of years after "Conspiracy Theory," though, and you don't need to have read that story to understand this one.

The last guests had gone, the house was--for the first time all day--quiet, and Xander had even managed to chase Andrew out of the office. "Go," he said, gently pushing Andrew toward the door. "Spend Christmas Eve with your boyfriend, so I can spend it with mine, okay? If you're here, he's going to come up with work he should be doing." And even though, technically, today had been dedicated to holiday parties, they'd been "on duty," especially during the afternoon, when the kids who couldn't or didn't want to go home over the break had been there for their celebration. Considering how many of the Watcher trainees were staying at school because the deaths of a lot of the old Council meant they didn't have homes to go to, Rupert had been determined to make certain they had the best Christmas possible.   
  
Xander wasn't sure how good of a Christmas you could have when you were a teenager with dead parents, but a party couldn't hurt, especially since the kids who didn't feel like coming had been allowed to go into the village for the afternoon, instead.   
  
Things had relaxed a little once the kids had been herded off to their dorms and the faculty/staff/whatever-Watchers-and-grownup-Slayers-were-in-town party had started. Rupert's face had lost some of that tense look, although Xander wasn't sure if that was because of the absence of teenagers in their house, or because he'd unlocked the drinks cabinet and spiked the eggnog as soon as the last kid was gone.   
  
It was probably the eggnog, Xander decided when he went back to the living room; at least, Rupert had refilled his cup and was sprawled on the sofa, eyes half-closed, sipping it appreciatively.  
  
"Hey," Xander said, picking up some glasses from the coffee table, "I ran Andrew off. The least you could do is start cleaning up the mess." He grinned at Rupert.  
  
"Leave the washing-up for me," Rupert offered. "I doubt I'll touch it tonight, but I will get to it."   
  
"Fair enough." One of these days, he was going to convince Rupert to get a dishwasher, especially since it was part of Rupert's job now to entertain visiting Watchers, not to mention parents who'd come to make sure their daughters were all right at their new, weird, school. He'd offered to buy it himself, a few times--and to install it, for that matter--but Rupert was being stubborn. Possibly, Xander suspected, just for the sake of being stubborn; they had a tendency to do that to one another sometimes. He gathered up an armful of dirty dishes and headed through the doorway that led to the dining room. He'd pile everything on the kitchen counter and let Rupert figure it out in the morning.  
  
When he came back into the living room, Rupert was sitting up, his drink on the coffee table in front of him as he went through what looked like a battered shoebox. Curious, Xander sat down next to him, looking over his shoulder at the box. "More Christmas decorations?" he said. "I thought the kids put them all up this afternoon."   
  
"Not these," Rupert said. "I was afraid that something might happen to them."   
  
Xander laughed. "That would be 'something' like Niki and Walt chasing each other all over the house, trampling any Christmas ornament that dared to cross their path?" They were old enough to know better, really--they weren't even the youngest students at the school any more--but between cabin fever from being stuck indoors during this week's bout of bad weather, and excitement at having ten whole days off from lessons and training, they'd gotten kind of wild during the party.   
  
Balancing the box on his knee, Rupert picked up his cup again, draining the eggnog with a shudder. "Please, Xander, I beg of you, don't remind me." He smiled back at Xander, shuffling things around until he had a free arm to sling casually around Xander's shoulders. Xander slid closer, resting his head against Rupert's shoulder. Rupert smelled a little like aftershave and a little like alcohol; the latter smell made Xander's stomach clench a little from the memory of too many bad Christmases, but he had to admit that, while he was definitely tipsy, the drink had only relaxed Rupert a little.   
  
Xander was a fan of a relaxed Rupert. It led to all kinds of things that their students would be horrified to know that the headmaster and the Practical Field Experience teacher even  _knew_  about, let alone  _did_.  
  
"So, what's so special about the stuff in the box?" Xander asked, reaching for it. Rupert let him take it, leaning back against the couch and watching him as he began to take things out.   
  
"These are the ornaments with sentimental value. I'd like to put them on the tree," Rupert said, "but I'm afraid I don't trust my own coordination at this point."   
  
"I'll do it," Xander said, holding up the first ornament he'd removed, a fake stained-glass reindeer with a blotch of purple on his hind leg where someone had dropped the wrong color. "Hey," he said, "I recognize this. Dawn made them for everybody at Girl Scouts." Then he frowned. Dawn  _hadn't_  made them, because Dawn hadn't ever been twelve, but he'd hung an ornament like that on his own Christmas tree once he'd had an apartment to put one in. It had been lost in Sunnydale, of course, like all of his stuff, but it made sense that Rupert wouldn't have brought his back with him. He'd never expected to stay long when he'd come back to California. "You took it home with you?"   
  
"Of course," Rupert said.   
  
Xander gave him a faint smile. "At the time, I wouldn't have thought it was 'of course.' I thought you wanted to forget all of us."   
  
"You're difficult to forget," Rupert said, letting go of Xander so that he could get up and put the ornament on the tree.   
  
Xander grinned and hung the reindeer where one of the lights on the tree would highlight the purple spot. After all, Dawn would be here for dinner tomorrow, and it wasn't the holidays if you couldn't tease the ones you loved about dumb stuff they did when they were kids.   
  
"This one next," Rupert said, holding an ornament out carefully, a lot more carefully than Xander thought his level of intoxication deserved.   
  
It was a simple thing, already faded with age and with one corner bent and a bit ragged: a frame cut out of construction paper that had probably been dark blue once, a long time ago, holding a black-and-white picture of three kids: a boy who was maybe nine or ten holding a cricket bat; another boy, younger, grinning to show his missing front teeth; and a little girl looking grumpy and uncomfortable in a frilly dress.  
  
"Anyone I know?" Xander asked, carefully opening up the string loop that served as a hanger and placing the ornament on the tree, high enough that no one would accidentally bump it tomorrow while trying to grab a Christmas present.   
  
Rupert smiled. "The boy in the middle," he said, and Xander peered at the boy again. Maybe, he thought. Maybe he could see Rupert in the kid standing there, but he couldn't be certain. It was too hard for him, even now, to picture Rupert as anything but an adult.   
  
"So that's what you're going to look like when you get old--well, older--and forget to put your dentures in?" Xander grinned at him, stepping back to show Rupert the placement of the ornament. "How's that?"   
  
"Perfect," Rupert said; Xander had positioned it so that the picture would be clearly visible from Rupert's favorite chair.  
  
Xander came back to sit down next to him, wanting to go through the other ornaments in the box and see how many spots he had to find on the already over-decorated Christmas tree. "What about the other kids?" he asked, gingerly taking out a glass bell and setting it down on the table. "Who are they?" He knew Rupert had grown up with a lot of people who'd turned out to be Watchers, and some of them had survived; Xander might know, or know of, some of them.   
  
"David and Charlotte," Rupert said, with a smile. "My brother and sister."  
  
Xander blinked at him for a second. He'd always thought Rupert had been an only child. He'd met Rupert's  _father_ , for God's sake, and nobody had mentioned siblings. "Since when do you have a brother and sister?" he demanded.   
  
"Since I was three," Rupert said, chuckling. "Before that, I only had a brother."   
  
Ordinarily, Xander would have enjoyed Rupert's attempt at making a joke; work kept him way too serious these days. But right now, he was too curious. "Why haven't I heard of them?"   
  
"Charley--Charlotte--lives in Liverpool. She works in a bank, or at least she did the last time we had much of a conversation." Now Rupert's smile was a bit strained. "She rings up every December to invite me round for Boxing Day, but I never seem to find the time."  
  
That was interesting, Xander thought, and later, he and Rupert were going to talk more about that. After all, spending some time with Rupert's father hadn't gone all that badly, and if Charley was calling Rupert every year to invite him for the holidays, even after he turned her down year after year, she must not have hated him or anything. "And your brother?"  
  
"David's dead," Rupert said. "Over thirty years now."   
  
Xander reached out and took Rupert's hand, lacing their fingers together. "What happened? I mean, if it's something you don't mind talking about."   
  
Rupert shook his head. "There isn't much to say," he said. "David was four years older than me. He was the one my father was preparing to be a Watcher when we grew up." He gave Xander a slight smile. "I was allowed to plan to be a fighter pilot," he said. "Or a grocer. I was nine years old; I probably would have moved on to something else in a few months, regardless."  
  
"Your dad didn't want you to be a Watcher?" Xander had always gotten the impression that Rupert had been  _expected_  to follow in his father's footsteps on the Council. He'd seemed proud enough of Rupert's current position as head of it when he'd visited a while back.   
  
"I wouldn't say that," he said. "I'm sure he would have been quite pleased if all three of us had chosen to join the Council. It simply wasn't  _required_  of Charley and me, because we weren't the eldest." He smiled. "And, to be honest, it worked out well in this case; David wanted nothing more than to be exactly like our father when he grew up."  
  
Xander heard the softness in Rupert's voice, wondering how much of it was the eggnog and how much was affection for his long-gone big brother. The eggnog was definitely at least partly to blame; Rupert didn't often talk about his life before he came to Sunnydale, and almost  _never_  about what things were like when he was a kid. "But something happened to him?"   
  
Nodding, Rupert said, "He loved to ride--well, we all did; Mum and Dad were both horse-mad, and we got it from them--but when he was about thirteen, he tried to jump a fence and was thrown from his horse. He broke his back in the fall. Perhaps these days there would have been something the doctors could have done--I've no idea--but this was over forty years ago. He was paralyzed."  
  
Xander looked up at the tree, at the picture of the sturdy boy posing with his cricket bat. It was hard to imagine that kid, just a few years later, stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. "I'm sorry," he said, knowing it was probably a dumb thing to say, considering how long ago everything was.   
  
Rupert smiled at him. "Thank you," he said. "Anyway, that's how it became  _my_  destiny to join the Council, when I'd wanted anything but that."   
  
"They wouldn't take your brother because he couldn't walk? How stupid is that?" It wasn't like you needed legs to do research, after all. Half the time, Xander's feet fell asleep while they sat at the dining room table looking for something in one of Rupert's books, so walking was obviously  _completely_ unnecessary.  
  
"It wasn't quite like that," Rupert said. "David obtained a research position with the Council with no problem, but he couldn't be assigned to train a potential Slayer." Now that made a little more sense; Xander remembered how often Giles had gone out on patrol with Buffy, never mind how often he'd let her use him as a punching bag during training sessions. "So my father, when he realized David wasn't going to make a miraculous recovery, decided that it was my duty to become a Watcher as well."   
  
"That sucks," Xander said, "but I'm kind of glad he did." More than "kind of," to be honest, because if Rupert hadn't been a Watcher, there was no way Xander would ever have met him. And never mind that he probably would have wound up getting himself killed at some point before his twentieth birthday; he wouldn't have had  _this_ : this night, with Christmas lights and eggnog and friends and Rupert, leaning more heavily against his shoulder now, trusting him enough to tell him the personal stuff that he  _still_  usually tried to keep to himself instead of "burdening" the rest of them.   
  
"So am I," Rupert admitted, "but when I was ten, I hated him for it--him and David both, for a time." He sighed. "There's not much else to tell, honestly. I went to the Academy instead of the school my parents had intended for me to attend; I became a Watcher; and, when he was about twenty-five, David died. The accident had damaged his kidneys, and eventually, they just gave out." He leaned against Xander a little more, and Xander shifted so he could put his arm around Rupert, who remained silent but moved closer to him.   
  
"Good Lord," Rupert muttered after a minute or two. "I must have had too much to drink; I've become ridiculously maudlin."   
  
"It's Christmas Eve. Seems like a good enough time to tell me about your family to me." Xander shrugged. "I'd return the favor, but you've already heard all the horror stories." His parents were alive and well and living in Fresno; he'd sent them a Christmas card, and that was all he wanted to have to do with them.   
  
"Perhaps you're right."  
  
"I know I'm right." He grinned down at Rupert, placing a kiss on one graying temple. "Now. About this sister who keeps asking you to visit...."   
  
He groaned. "What about her?"  
  
"Don't you think you should? I mean, unless you hate her or something. The school can get by for a couple of days without us. The kids aren't scared of us anyway; Mrs. Cheever and Mr. Adams can keep them in line a lot better than we do." The dormitory supervisors terrified  _Xander_ , a little; it took a pretty hardened sixteen-year-old to look either of them in the eye without feeling guilty about  _something_  they'd done.   
  
Giving Xander a mock glower, Rupert said, "They're afraid of me. I  _am_  the headmaster, after all."   
  
"They're only scared of you because when they have to go to your office, they're either brand new or in serious trouble. And who wouldn't be a little freaked out when some guy's just turned up at your house and said, 'Vampires are real, you have superpowers, wanna go to boarding school?'"   
  
That got a chuckle out of Rupert, but he still shook his head. "I'd wanted to spend the holiday with you," he pointed out.   
  
"Like you'd be able to stop me from coming with you," Xander said, but then hesitated. "Unless you don't want me to meet any more of your family?"   
  
"It isn't that," Rupert said, "but you don't really want to listen to a lot of strangers reminiscing about things that happened before you were born?"   
  
"I hung out with Spike back in Sunnydale," Xander said, "and I'm guessing your trips down memory lane involve a lot fewer severed body parts."  
  
Rupert's laugh was warm and genuine, this time. "Spoken like an only child," he said. "In all seriousness, though, you wouldn't mind?"   
  
"Mind? No  _way_ ," he said. "I'm hoping for Grade A boyfriend-torturing material. Everything I've got on you now is getting kind of old." He grinned. "So you'll call her tomorrow and ask her if she has room for a couple more?"  
  
"If you like," Rupert said; then, he reached up and turned Xander's face toward his, capturing Xander's mouth in a slow, gentle kiss. "We should be heading upstairs soon," he said, the look on his face telling Xander he had more in mind that just making an early night of it.   
  
"I'm all yours," Xander said. "Just let me finish hanging these ornaments."  
  
It took a few more kisses before Rupert would let him go, not that Xander minded. "Don't be too long," Rupert said, voice husky, and Xander shook his head vehemently.   
  
"I plan to set new land speed records for tree decoration," he promised.   
  
It really didn't take all that long for Xander to finish decorating the tree, even if he had to hunt for the box of spare ornament hangers when it turned out half the stuff in the box was missing theirs. "Okay," Xander said, turning around, "now I really am all yours."   
  
The only response he got was a soft snore; Rupert had fallen asleep on the couch, his hair mussed and his glasses askew on his nose. "Typical," Xander grumbled fondly, pulling an afghan--Mrs. Cheever had what Xander considered a terrifying crochet addiction--from the back of the couch and spreading it over Rupert. He reached down and gently removed Rupert's glasses, folding them and laying them safely on the coffee table, before kissing Rupert softly.   
  
"Merry Christmas, you," he said, and, smiling, went upstairs to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
